


Right Hook

by shinjaninja



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Kingdom Hearts Secret Santa 2016, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinjaninja/pseuds/shinjaninja
Summary: A Sora and Vanitas fic where boys talk with their fists.Kingdom Hearts Secret Santa 2016 gift to clockworkclown91





	

**Author's Note:**

> The idea was that if Sora and Vanitas weren't at odds with each other, they might really bond over their boyish love of fisticuffs.
> 
> I called up on my Tae Kwon Do knowledge from middle school also, never thought I would use that again.

Sora first met Vanitas when they were six, in the same karate class at a local gym. Sora had waved shyly from behind his mother’s knees, eager to make a new friend. Vanitas had broken his nose. Sora had watched him get scolded by his instructor, and received an apology that neither of them pretended was genuine. 

In middle school, Sora found out Vanitas was a bully. He had seen him shoving the books out of another student’s arms and trip him when he walked around corners. He’d heard down the line that the victim – Ventus – went way back with Vanitas, with some ugly history in their families, but Sora didn’t see Vanitas grinning down at his victim and feel bad for him. In those moments, Sora only saw a bully. 

Sora received his first detention for fighting at school. Both he and Vanitas had gotten a tongue lashing from the principal, holding ice packs to their eyes and nursing bruised cheeks and arms. When they were alone, waiting for the office to call their parents, Sora had grinned at Vanitas. “That was a great right hook.”

Vanitas hadn’t looked impressed with Sora, but the corner of his mouth had quirked. He’d held no doubt in his mind that his right hook had been nothing less than excellent. 

Two weeks later, Sora saw Vanitas wander back into his karate class. They were short on uniforms in his size, so Vanitas stretched in the corner in sweats. “What made you come back?” Sora had asked him, lounging in his split while they warmed up before class. He could feel Vanitas eyeing the red belt at his waist. 

“Pops said I had to take out my aggression somewhere.” Vanitas shifted lower in his stretches, trying to match Sora more closely. “Doesn’t wanna deal with calls from the school.” 

“Your dad sounds pretty strict.”

Vanitas hadn’t responded. Sora was assigned to help Vanitas through his forms, but Vanitas thought he remembered more than he did. Frustration curled on his face until Sora stepped on one of his misplaced feet, and he punched Sora solidly in the shoulder for it. He’d spent the remaining twenty minutes of class doing push-ups in the corner of the room. 

Fighting at school didn’t stop, but Vanitas got smarter. He picked fights with people who could handle them, though he’d keep knocking books from Ventus’s arms, daring him to hit back. The kids Vanitas picked at were all big, each at least a head taller, and sometimes Sora would flinch seeing them both slip out the back to settle a score. More often than not, though he found that Vanitas would actually make it back inside, while whoever he picked a fight with would limp. 

They entered high school, and Vanitas got his purple belt in karate. Sora was still at red. 

“How come?” Vanitas had asked. His right hook landed squarely in the middle of Sora’s padded gloves, eyes sharp to see which target he would lift next. “Just test for black, you know all this stuff.”

Sora shrugged, and then faked raising his right hand again before holding up his left. “I dunno. Black belt’s like… all this responsibility. All the code and discipline…” He grins when Vanitas reads his next fake and lands his fits square on the target. “Can you see me up front, leading the warm ups?”

“I bet you’d be the type to preach about protecting your friends with this crap.” Vanitas snatched the gloves from him, shoving them on his own hands for Sora to punch at. 

“That sounds like me, since that’s what it’s for.” The punch Sora landed on Vanitas’s left hand sent a sting up his wrist, and he braced himself for another. There’s a sense of surprise that punch after punch reverberates through his bones, and it distracts him enough that his hand slips, landing him a punch to his chin when the gloves aren’t there to catch it. At school, Sora spots him with the bruise blossomed along his jaw, and when Vanitas meets his eyes, he grins.

Vanitas made his way through high school, just as he made his way through belts. He found that he was held back because of his discipline and respect, rather than his knowledge of the forms (which was excellent) or the number of boards he could break (which was a lot.) He moved up one belt, but talked back to his teachers and spent classes doing push-ups instead of sparring. 

Sora had a friend who transferred into their class, and Vanitas didn’t like him. “He’s here to take the black belt test, with me.” Sora sounded excited, way different than he’d sounded before. Something about that was threatening. 

Riku was the same height as the kids Vanitas usually picked on, and Sora had told stories of how scrappy they they’d been over their summers growing up together. The disappointment is there when he watched Riku, calm and cool and collected, practice self-defense steps and forms with Sora in the corner. He saw a peace in him that Vanitas didn’t think he’d ever know.

He only got to spar with Riku once while he’d been there. It was a fight that had started fair, but frustration at not being able to rile Riku up made Vanitas’s knuckles graze his throat. The teacher called for Vanitas to back down, but he hadn’t, wanting to see Riku lose his cool, but instead ended up sore and pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind his back. 

“Your friend’s a prick,” Vanitas had told Sora after class, and while Sora had strongly disagreed with him, citing all of his positive attributes and achievements, he still held the ice pack up to Vanitas’s swollen cheek.

Three weeks later, Riku wandered into class with his black belt fastened regally at his waist. Sora didn’t.

“Riku’s way better for it, anyway,” Sora told him, pushing at Vanitas’s back to lower him further into his stretches. There was a certainty in his words that sounded false, a pull to his punches that he didn’t usually have. 

“You don’t have to be okay that they fucked you over,” Vanitas grunted a week later after practice. They were wandering back to the same part of their neighborhood, set to split up in three blocks to their respective homes. 

“They didn’t screw me over, I just wasn’t ready.” Sora shrugged, and that made Vanitas angry. “It’s fine.” But Vanitas knew the shift in grip on his bag, the stubborn look up. The nicer, sweeter version of how Vanitas talked to his dad when he knew he’d fucked up, and it was none of his business.

Vanitas shoved him. Knocked the bag right out of his arms.

“Hey!” Sora frowned as he reached for his bag. “What’s your deal?”

Vanitas kicked it out of his arms, tossing his own bag with it. He shoved at Sora’s shoulders instead, forcing him back into the grass.

“Quit it, Vanitas, I’m not in the mood!” But Vanitas picked the fight, out stepped him, shoved him back, moved into his face, until he saw something twist in Sora’s face and felt his own whip to the side. His cheek throbbed from the tight-fisted right hook that had landed, and watched the surprise at his own attack show on Sora’s face.

“I… sorry, but you wouldn’t…” but Vanitas heard the release in his voice, the excitement of adrenaline and punched back. Sora grunted, and the punch wasn’t as hard as the one that bruised Vanitas’s cheek, but it was nothing to sniff at. 

It was a frenzy, after. There was nothing of the rules and discipline they learned year after year, no technique or breathing exercises or twist of the hips. Each punch was raw, each grunt a wet, panted reaction to a hit. Sora managed to tackle Vanitas and send them tumbling into a neighbor’s backyard, fists hitting solidly against each other with no intent but to release their own energy and anger into someone, something else. Vanitas’s lip split, Sora’s nose hit the ground and burst blood all over his lip. Their cheeks were shred on some rocks, and Vanitas was sure he’d cracked his head on a sandbox toy that had been strewn into the grass.

“Riku deserved it.” They both laid panting in the grass, sore and wheezing from a hit Sora had landed in Vanitas’s ribs. He’d be sour about it, but Sora would be sporting a nasty black eye tomorrow at school, and he considered that even. Sora laughed a little painfully. “I just… thought maybe for a minute, I did, too.”

Vanitas looked over at him, not much visible in the dark, but saw the impression of his grin. There was a lightness to his voice. A relief. “Is your dad gonna kick your ass for failing when you get home?”

“What? No.”

“Then you’re fine. Do the test again. Kick their asses.” Vanitas pat Sora’s chest in what was meant to be a gesture of solidarity, but just made Sora cough painfully and shove him off. “Your right hook got better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There was something in the simplicity of it that made Sora laugh painfully, throwing an arm over his eyes at the stupidity of the situation. “You suck,” he wheezed out between laughs, and Vanitas grinned in the dark.


End file.
